Let’s take a look at the pie chart that Dave used to claim that the Federal Reserve owns close to half of all US government debt. There’s a section in blue for Federal Reserve and Intragovernmental Holdings. Most of you are probably already asking aren’t those two separate categories merged together. Yes they are. Anyone when making a pie chart can combine or separate categories as they see fit. Debt held by the Federal Reserve is just that. Intragovernmental Holdings is debt held by government agencies such as the Social Security Trust Fund and the Medicare Trust Fund. At this point many of you must be asking how do we know what the percentages for each part of the blue section are. From the pie chart we don’t. Dave in HI will point to this as evidence that it’s nearly all the Federal Reserve yet more investigation is needed to make such a claim.

Let’s do that investigation and see if Dave in HI is right. Let’s use numbers from June 2008 to be completely consistent. I went to Treasury Direct which publishes debt amounts for the US government. I used a date of 6/30/2008 because I want to be consistent with the pie chart. (If you want to repeat this test be sure to use that date so you do everything consistently.) As of June 2008 the debt amounts are:

Total debt: $9,492,006,123,003.80

Intragovernmental Holdings: $4,206,942,429,625.55

Debt held by the Public: $5,285,063,693,378.25

The public that Debt held by the Public refers to is everyone outside of the US government. This also includes foreign governments and entities (i.e. China and Japan). The number for Intragovernmental Holdings is just for Intragovernmental Holdings or otherwise it would say Federal Reserve and Intragovernmental Holdings. If you don’t believe this, then let’s test it. We have the total debt so let’s multiply that by the percentage of the blue section on the pie chart:

Notice how the debt amount for the blue section of the pie chart is greater than Intragovernmental Holdings. Since its bigger by over $400 billion it’s not a rounding error. Let’s get the total debt that is owned by the Federal Reserve by subtracting Intragovernmental Holdings from the blue section of the pie chart amount:

$4,686,203,422,926.98 – $4,206,942,429,625.55 = $ 479,260,993,301.43

The Federal Reserve had a little over $479 billion dollars of US government debt in June 2008. That’s around 5% of US government debt not nearly half. You don’t have to take my word for it. All of these numbers are published. Repeat my calculations. Prove it to yourself. I’m not the one asking you to believe in shadowy plots by bankers with no evidence. I am giving you hard numbers that are published and available to anyone. Run the same test that I did.

It’s possible to produce hard numbers since all of these things are published and available to anyone. If you want to make a different claim, produce numbers that pass basic math or its BS.

I’m not getting into whether the Federal Reserve, fiat money, the gold standard, etc. are good or bad ideas. There are good arguments for both sides. However, false facts and claims of secret plots by bankers aren’t good arguments. You can argue against the Federal Reserve without pulling a conspiracy out of your ass.